The networked computing environment (e.g., cloud computing environment) is an enhancement to the predecessor grid environment, whereby multiple grids and other computation resources may be further enhanced by one or more additional abstraction layers (e.g., a cloud layer), thus making disparate devices appear to an end-consumer as a single pool of seamless resources. These resources may include such things as physical or logical computing engines, servers and devices, device memory, and storage devices, among others.
Traditional service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based solutions typically lack a capability to dynamically qualify an entity as a service. A service is generally “layer sensitive.” A layer refers to the stratum in a logical stack where a service may be hosted. A service that is hosted in a lower stratum may be less granular and may directly interact with provider applications. Conversely, a service that is hosted in an upper stratum may be very coarse and may directly not interact with provider applications, but rather leverage lower granular services for fulfilling a request. Thus, each stratum is different, and the service residing in every layer needs to be subjected to a service litmus test (SLT) for complete modeling. Challenges currently exist in that existing SLTs typically include a series of manually implemented and disconnected questions that rely on guesswork and human interpretation. As such, existing approaches may fail to provide a consistent and/or accurate analysis.